Whether it is blocking Amazon HQ2, or the disastrous handling of the pandemic (If NY was its own country it would have had one of the highest per capita nCov2-mortality-rates of all industrialized nations), or the deteriorating security situation – decades of one-party rule leave behind a dysfunctional, rotten, place.
All of those failures where known to happen in the moment the root-cause policies were enacted. Dysfunctional places enact them inspite reality's warnings, because by now reality is a white supremacist.
The subway-cars can become a place to forni- and deficate for the homeless for weeks, making it unusable for citizens. But critique cannot make a dent, becaue it is guilty by association.
That's why even if tax-payers flee the place day by day, its institutions must defy that reality. Insitutions like the NYT are a major part of the city's dysfunction. They are to blame, thus you see such rediculous articles getting "past the editors".
this is the type of stuff people who don't live in NYC say. guess what, I use the subway all the time and things go perfectly well! it's definitely got its problems and there's a real homelessness crisis in NYC (although nothing like the west coast tent cities exists here), but to say it's 'not usable'? you're out of touch.
Also, the idea that the subway is unusable to the citizens of NYC is utterly divorced from reality. There are issues, of course, but New Yorkers depend heavily on the subway for their transit.
“I understand that this is largely a pre-Covid population, but adding over 600,000 people is like adding the population of Miami."
This is such horseshit that any rational reader should immediate see through it. Miami, the largest city in Florida, and one of the largest cities in the united states, being reduced to just "Miami City" population is an absolute joke.
Miami-Dade, with 2,716,940 people in 2019, is the seventh most populous county in the United States. ... Miami metropolitan area, with 6,166,488 people. Census, April 1, 2020 Miami City: 442,241 people.
Miami City has only ~600,000 because practically every 4 square mile area of Miami is its own incorporated city like Pinecrest, Coral Gables, etc.